The Amazing Week in Nghe An

Last Sunday, the day I left with my co-workers on the Nghe An site visit, a tempestuous tropical storm swept through northern Vietnam. My colleagues, the ever superstitious Vietnamese, took it as a bad omen, but we decided to carry on as planned.

We were four: Ms. Khanh, the project manager; Mr. Tuan, our able driver; and Phuong, my trusty sidekick. Mr. Tuan, sporting his trademark shy grin, arrived to pick me up in a sort of SUV-mini-van-type vehicle called a Toyota Zace, which they obviously don’t market in the U.S. (Has anyone else heard of this model??) It was a fancier means of transportation than I had envisioned, and its powerful air conditioning system provided us with an ambiance a la upholstered meat locker. Oreos and baby wipes were my contribution to the communal travel supplies for our 6 1/2 hour journey.

Rain flooded the highway, and high winds broke branches off the trees and threw them onto the road. Umbrellas were futile, flapping backwards and inside out with every gust. When we reached a town which was safely out of the storm’s path, we stopped for dinner. The place had the atmosphere of a German beer hall, except it had rows and rows of plastic tables and chairs, flowing rice wine and huge bowls of freshly steamed purple squid, the latter of which I polished off two. Power surges made the lights flicker off for several minutes at a time, inciting our fellow diners, the drunken Vietnamese, to cheer wildly and toast each other with increased fervor. We stayed the night at a guesthouse Nghia Dan and watched overdramatized Vietnamese amateur theater on television so we could fall asleep.

Side note: Guest houses and hotels in Vietnam provide large plastic sandals for guests to use in the bathroom. This is because Vietnamese bathrooms generally have a showerhead attached to the wall, and the water shoots right onto the floor, which is made of either tiles or plain cement, as well as spraying over the toilet and sink. The sink water also runs out onto the floor. All of the bathroom water (well, except for the toilet, of course!) flows down a single drain hole in the corner of the bathroom. In other words, your feet (and usually pantlegs too) get very wet in the bathroom.

The following morning we ate Bun Cha for breakfast (good, but not as tasty as in Hanoi!), and after a quick coffee, we drove into Quy Hop (the Quy Hop District’s capital town) to meet with three district-level representatives of the Vietnam Women’s Union (VWU). Khanh has worked with them throughout project implementation over the past two years. They all get along more like family than colleagues, which is the Vietnamese way — telling stories, clucking and commenting about each others’ outfits and personal health, cracking jokes and slapping each other on the back for a hour or so before getting down to work.

These women are in their fifties, and their noble faces and hands are heavily lined from lives as rice farmers and mothers probably seven or ten times over. They are quick to smile and kindly spoke slowly for my benefit so that I could understand a few words in Vietnamese now and again. The rest of the morning was spent discussing the outline of the next project phase and helping them construct problem tree diagram which explained the root causes of poverty in Quy Hop district. Their commitment to helping the farming communities was obvious. One of the three leaders, the wonderful Ms. Hien, accompanied us to the three project communes in the following days of our sejour.

Breaking for lunch, we resumed the back-slapping and story-telling at a restaurant whose specialty was chargrilled dead baby birds. They arrive at our table in piles four or five high to a dish, beaks and eyes wide open in shock that their fleeting time on Earth could be cut so short by the merciless Vietnamese cooking fire. We ate them whole (heads, feet and all) with chopsticks — family style, of course. By the way, the word for bird in Vietnamese is pronounced TCHEEM, and it is also one of the more harmless slang words for a particular part of the male reproductive anatomy. This, of course, provided plenty of fodder for dirty jokes. It was a rollicking good time!

To be continued…